Sacrifice

Marilyn Holdsworth

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Anger,
abhorrence and disbelief motivated me to write Sannah and the Pilgrim. I
was and remain appalled by past and present governments’ policy on
refugees and asylum seekers. News bulletins and current affairs
programmes helped fuel my deep concerns about the direction our country
is heading. From a country that welcomed scores of displaced people
after the Second World War, we are becoming xenophobic, rejecting those
that have fled what for most of us are inconceivable terrors. As a
migrant myself, I tried to imagine how I would have felt, if instead of
paying my ten pounds and travelling here on an ocean liner, I had been
forced to flee my homeland, hand over my life’s savings to greedy people
smugglers and risk my life by boarding a leaky overcrowded boat.

My
thoughts then turned to a different category of refugees, those we can
expect in the not so distant future. Low-lying Pacific islands are
already under threat from accelerating climate change, about which
wealthy first-world countries have so far failed to act. Soon there will
be a flood of environmental refugees seeking a safe haven in our
sparsely populated and prosperous nation. How will our government react
then, when turning back the boats won’t be an option?

I
felt my option as a fiction writer was to draw on contemporary
government policies regarding refugees and climate change to create a
portrait of a future Australia that is, to my mind, entirely possible.
The idea to divide the country into zones according to race of origin
came from a thinly veiled proposal made by an ultra-conservative
politician some years ago. Research into climate change led me to place
my characters in the most inhospitable part of twenty-fourth century
Australia, the extremely hot, humid and disease-ridden north. Confined
to the Brown Zone (formerly Queensland) the people, descendants of
Pacific environmental refugees, are forced to cultivate the remaining
fertile coastal strip to produce food for White Southerners, whose zone,
although more suitable for human habitation, is too arid to support
agriculture.

I was inspired to create the role of
storyteller for my protagonist, Sannah, by the manner in which
information is often distorted by both the media and government in order
to provoke certain reactions. For instance, fears of being swamped by
refugees are intensified by using terms such as ‘illegals’ and concerns
over rising utility costs assuaged by promises to repeal the Carbon Tax.
Sannah’s people are kept in ignorance through a steady diet of Tales (a
weird blend of historical fact and fiction) delivered by
government-trained storytellers. In similar fashion, we are fed only
what governments and multinational companies want us to hear and it
takes a great deal of effort to uncover the truth. Lies ensure
compliance in both twenty-first and twenty-fourth century Australia.

About the Author:

Sue
Parritt is an Australian writer, originally from England. Her poetry
and short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies in
Australia, Britain and the USA. After graduating BA University of
Queensland 1982 (majors: English Literature, Drama and French), Sue
worked in university libraries until taking early retirement in 2008 to
pursue her long-held dream of becoming a professional writer. Since
then she has writtenSannah and the Pilgrim,numerous short stories and poems and‘Feed Thy Enemy’,
a feature film script set in Naples in 1944 and 1974 and based on a
true story (Sue is currently seeking a producer). She recently completed
a second novelSafety Zoneand is now writing a sequel toSannah and the Pilgrim–the working title isPia and the Skyman.

When
Sannah the Storyteller, a descendant of environmental refugees from
drowned Pacific islands, finds a White stranger on her domestep, she
presumes he’s a political prisoner on the run seeking safe passage to
egalitarian Aotearoa. However, Kaire’s unusual appearance, bizarre
behaviour, and insistence he’s a pilgrim suggest otherwise.

Appalled
by apartheid Australia, Kaire uses his White privileges to procure
vital information for Sannah and her group of activists regarding new
desert prisons that are to be built to house all political prisoners.
The group plans sabotage but needs help, and Kaire is a willing
accomplice. But when Sannah turns Truthteller and threatens to reveal
the country’s true history, even Kaire’s White privilege and advanced
technology cannot save Sannah and her daughter from retribution.

About Sannah and the Pilgrim:

Sannah
and the Pilgrim is a tale of courage, defiance and deceit that asks the
reader, ‘Would you risk death by telling the truth about your country,
or would you play it safe and spend your life as a storyteller?’

Are
you concerned about our governments’ (both past and present) failure to
act on climate change and the detention and inhumane treatment of
refugees? I am, so I have drawn on contemporary conservative attitudes
to present a dystopian view of a future Australia in my speculative
fiction novel Sannah and the Pilgrim. Read it and discover what could
happen to our‘lucky’ country.